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Notes -
Does it matter?
Trump flops on all the hard questions in a way that asks whether or not there is anything deeper in there than making the liberals cry. Of course there is, and of course he understands but he and every supporter of his don't actually care about that.
Getting dragged into the harder questions is a sign of weakness.
To me this is a foreign perspective. To say that a politician being compelled to address difficult questions signifies weakness doesn't value intelligence, or the ability to reason, to say nothing of dignity, honor, or ethics--it valorizes the effectiveness of, for lack of a better word, the bully or charlatan. Which, hey, the bullies best at their role always have a nice following of toadies. Followers who, outside his presence (and it's usually but not always a him) try the same strategies but less effectively. And bullies can get things done, but then so did Charles Taylor, Papa Doc Duvalier, etc etc. But once they're gone, regardless of whether you liked their policies (which they themselves probably didn't care about except in as much as they kept them in power) there's suddenly a big hole that will not be filled. Because what to fill it with? Not ideas, surely. Not policy, or vision, or core values. No one agrees in what these are, they just agree they want that hole filled so they and theirs can hang on to power. I'm not saying this is your perspective, necessarily.
People don't vote for Trump because they think he, personally, is the best at running the country. No, they're voting for a Good Strong King who will if only the tsar knew his way into putting Good Caring and Competent Ministers in charge of everything.
Trump's core supporters don't want him ironing out the intricacies of tax policies or trade deals or whatever. They want him putting capable people in charge of listening to their sort of people about those things, and to tear down whatever stands in their way. For that, you need a bully, not a genius.
Or a leader people respect. But I see what you're saying. My little hypothetical wasn't meant to describe Trump, by the way, though reading through it it seems an obvious jab at him. I do think Trump leads through ethos and that little drop of Retsyn that certain leaders have, that no one since Obama has had in the Democratic party. Both Reagan and Clinton had it. You don't have to have good policies to have that vibe where people just, in hearing or watching you, think they're in good hands, that they're going to be okay. Trump has it for his party but he doesn't cross the aisle well.
Harris definitely does not have it, at least for me, and though usually I can see why even people I disagree with are inspired by whatever speaker (I see the appeal in certain faith healers, for example, even if I don't share it) but I can't with Harris.
Edit:
Had to look it up, as usual for me in these parts. Thanks for the new phrase.
I will totally agree with you. I don't like Obama, I didn't like Obama, but watching him give a speech is the sort of thing which makes me understand how people voted for him. Biden, Harris, etc- they don't look like they belong there.
Trump has it, and part of the appeal is that he doesn't cross the aisle well at all. To his core supporter the problem is with the bureaucrats not listening to their sort of people and someone who's overly democrat-friendly can't very well be expected to fix that problem.
I agree with this and have made the same point before. One of the reasons for Trump's support is that he is so obviously not a member of the existing political class that people don't expect him to behave like other politicians and get subsumed into the blob the moment he takes office. Loudly advertising and broadcasting that he doesn't give a shit what these people want or respect is one of the ways he got the immense loyalty that he now commands.
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Could there be an Is vs Ought distinction here? Focusing on the individual intelligence of a President or Presidential candidate imports the assumption that their individual judgement and analysis is dispositive. That assumption seemed shaky to me before Biden, and certainly hasn't improved since.
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can’t see where it keeps its brain." I'm not confident that we can see where a given Administration keeps its brain. Which do you think would generate a more reliable set of predictions for the outputs of a Kamala presidency: a careful analysis of her responses to interview questions, or a careful analysis and extrapolation of Blue Tribe social trends? Which should we consider the leading indicator?
I think that this metaphor makes a lot of sense when applied to a presidential administration, especially one riding on a movement that isn't about them, but the comparison of figurative thing to literal thing in the metaphor makes my head spin. When would you actually run into something where you don't know where it keeps its brain?
It's a quote from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
...But more generally, it seems to me that this a problem we run into quite a bit, hence the popularity of Egregores like Moloch. When I look at the problems of the world, some of them seem straightforwardly the fault of individual people, but many more of them seem to be beyond any discrete human agency. The Media seems to me to be a thing, distinct from any individual journalist, and I don't know where it keeps its brain either.
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I agree in principle with what you write here. And my answer would be the latter is a better indication, if for no other reason than that Harris doesn't strike me as a leader, but a follower bent by whichever way the Democratic wind seems to be blowing at the time. This is another reason I'd like her to be subjected to focused questioning by an impartial interviewer. How much of her is True Believer? My suspicion is there's no belief system in place other than to preach platitudes to a besotted choir.
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Trump gets at the issues in a much deeper way than all the policy wonks cynically consumed by statistics and specifics. What do you do about the Ukraine War? It's not hard, you get on the phone with Putin, you stop the war with a phone call, this is literally how that works. You don't need answers to "hard questions," you need the vision to lead and inspire.
A phone call, of course, why didn't they think of that. Oh wait they did think of that, Russia invaded regardless. And then Lavrov gets snippy when the recorded call was released, because it clarifies just how disinterested in negotiation Putin was at the time.
Regardless if a call is made or not, I fully expect that given a second Trump administration we will immediately see the Kremlin bleating the need for a ceasefire. Russia's offensive strategy since Ukraine's culminated seems to be been to try and claw as much territory as possible, no matter the cost, on the gamble that a second Trump administration can bring Ukraine to the negotiating table. Russia wouldn't be seeking a ceasefire for lasting peace, but to give it time to lick its wounds.
"No matter the cost" is somewhat hyperbolic so I'll render it in clearer detail. US DOD estimates 350,000 killed or wounded between Feb 22 and June 24, estimates vary but the US is on the more conservative end. This might not look so bad from a glance at the map, after all Russia would end the war with a decent chunk of additional territory, but it made most of those gains in the opening stages and paid most of the cost in marginal gains. More pressing for Russia, most of its prodigious inheritance of Soviet equipment is running dry, which is manifesting itself in the repeated appearance of motorcycles in offensive action. Although if Russia finds itself on the defensive again, it will be the lack of artillery that will be most pressing. Russia can replace some lost equipment, but nowhere near enough to meet current consumption rates. The bottom line here is that Russia's warfighting potential has been trending downward since the beginning of the invasion and is only going to get worse in the near time.
On the other side Ukraine's warfighting potential has trended upward since '22. Over time its backers have been more willing to ship more and better materiel, and lift previous restrictions on how certain systems are used. This week the first transfer of F-16 should finally be completed, which is expected to improve Ukraine's situation re: glide bombs and cruise missiles. Ukraine has also made Crimea extremely costly for Russia to hold, and an abandonment by Russia (de facto or official) would be a huge political win for Ukraine, this is why Ukraine has invested so many of its highest quality and scarcest assets in making the peninsula untenable. A ceasefire would give Russia breathing room to undo much of the damage Ukraine has inflicted.
With this in mind what can the US do to bring Ukraine to the table? The naive answer is to simply cut off aid. Ukraine already experienced some very tough months without US aid, and while they were amongst the most difficult of the war and resulted in more territory lost than in the months with, there was no indication that the materiel shortage risked causing a total collapse. Judging the effect of a further extended period without US aid is anyone's game. Some things to consider are that Russia's fighting power declining means the loss of US aid hurts less over time. The European states also get a say. I expect that if a US administration were to cut off Ukraine entirely they would take measures to rebalance back in Ukraine's favour again. I think this is the scenario in which we are most likely to see European soldiers in Ukraine, in some fighting capacity. However more likely is the Europeans and other foreign partners would accelerate their existing efforts.
tldr: a Trump administration likely won't want to offer Ukraine any real carrots, and it's one good stick has clear limitations and drawbacks.
What? The Ukrainian air force is reduced to flinging Storm Shadows and similar at extreme range. They cannot even defend their capital against constant bombing. There's not much reason to think F-16s will change that, they're not stealth aircraft that can penetrate Russian air defences and they lack secure airbases to operate from. The Ukrainian power grid is in a complete shambles, their domestic military industry has been heavily degraded. The Ukrainian navy consists of some kamikaze drones which cannot really contest Russia in the Black Sea, even if they sink a few ships. Ukraine has been drafting extensively for the army, dragging men kicking and screaming into vans. Forty year olds and the disabled do not make for great assault infantry.
Russia has a land bridge to Crimea, a highway, a rail line and the bridge. Their position there is in no way untenable. It's really easy for them to hold and resupply it. The small initial Russian invasion force has been replaced by a much larger army. Apparently they can produce more shells than the US and EU. They've had much more materiel throughout the whole war, including artillery.
At the end of the day, this is a conventional war. The side with more soldiers and more equipment is going to win.
I'm not expecting F-16s to change a whole lot, but longer range munitions like AMRAAMs should at very least prove useful for intercepting cruise missiles, which improves their air defence picture as a whole. I mention them because they are a recent, high profile, example of the overall trend thus far.
Sea drones don't need to be able to 'seriously contest' the black sea fleet to be useful strategically. They make it harder for ships to resupply Crimea, force the black sea fleet to operate further away from Ukraine's coast and have likely been critical in preventing the fleet from blockading shipments of grain.
Something that I tried to stress in my previous comment was that this advantage is a one-time bonus that is running its course.
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I think the F-16s will be better against Russian aircraft than the MiG-29s and maybe the Su-27s (if Ukraine has any left) because AMRAAMs but I don't expect that to make a difference in the overall posture of the war. I'm not even sure if Ukraine intends to use them in the counter-air role instead of just replacing the Su-24s in the "Storm Shadow launch platform" role.
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Sorry, what happens on this phone call?
A deal is made.
Trump had four years to make a deal with Putin already on Ukraine that would solve the conflict for good (after all, it started in 2014). The most notable attempt, the 2018 summit, achieved exactly jack and shit.
Russia also didn't do "jack shit" for 8 years.
The deal could be something as simple as if you want us to stop sending military aid to Ukraine, all you have to do is withdraw to the pre February 22 borders.
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Trump threatens to bomb Moscow, simple as!
Nah, probably not this time – this time the call just says "cease-fire?"
Obviously the war would actually stop after a lot of wrangling and haggling and might even start up again but if Trump threatened to cut Ukraine's aid off unless they negotiated they almost certainly would show up, and Russia showed up last time.
There would need to be a threat to Russia that if they aren’t somewhat reasonable we would increase funding to Ukraine while providing a carrot of removing sanctions.
There is no threat that the US can make - there's no amount of funding the US can provide that would make up for the current situation. If they deploy force in the amount required to change the outcome of the Ukraine war, they would be unable to defend Israel and Taiwan... and there's a very decent chance that they would actually lose the conflict militarily to boot (assuming no nukes are used, because if they do get used the world just ends). As for removing sanctions, they're already moving to systems of trade and exchange that bypass the US' hold on the financial system because they don't trust it anymore (and can you blame them?) - they'd view it as nice, but they would presumably then just take all their money out and leave anyway.
Sure, Trump would probably be able to negotiate a surrender, but what could the US actually do to change the situation beyond giving up? When you take into account other commitments like Taiwan and Israel there's no stick at all - Trump would just be negotiating the US exit and surrender. That said, my personal view is that the Ukraine war was a terrible idea, a massive waste of blood and treasure, so the sooner that happens the better.
I agree that Ukraine was always a mistake. But you could say “we will provide XYZ (better weapons compared to what they have today)” while telling Ukraine “if we want you to take deal “ABC” and you don’t, then you get nothing.
I could basically see it freezing the lines roughly where they are today. I guess that’s a surrender. But realism needs to hold sway here.
And yes, the sanctions removal isn’t a huge benefit for them (and was a massive mistake for the US) but it is some benefit.
We could give them 5th generation aircraft or nukes, but we won't. We gave them top of the line artillery, air-to-surface and surface-to-air weapons, and modern tanks. "There's nothing better to give them" isn't technically true, but it's directionally accurate.
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Who do you think has the ability to ensure Ukraine gets nothing?
It's certainly no American- the Americans haven't even been the majority supplier of aid to the Ukrainians. The single biggest supplier, yes, the single most important yes, but EU institutions have given more financial aid to Ukraine than the US has given in value of all combined military / financial / humanitarian, and this is without addressing European national contributions.
Even if the US gives nothing, Ukraine still gets quite a bit. And if the cause of a cutoff is Donald Trump- and I'll just note that people have long downplayed his willingness to conditionally support Ukraine to take his opposition as a given- the Europeans are not going to meekly follow him, when both their own domestic-political interests and strategic interests remain with supporting Ukraine even, or especially in definace to, American pressure otherwise.
Why do you think Realism is any friend of freezing the fight along the current lines and surrendering?
Realism would note that the current war is at least the third continuation war Russia has pursued against Ukraine since the initial invasion of Crimea. (The first continuation war being the astroturfed Nova Russian campaign intended to spark a civil war, and the second continuation war being the direct military intervention when the Nova Russian uprising failed and was on the cusp of complete collapse.)
Realism would note that the Russia's leadership intentions and objectives that drove the current war are still unresolved, and thus the motivation basis remains for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that Russia's terms of cease fire and negotiations have for years hinged around limiting Ukraine's ability to resist a future incursion, and thus been conditional on the conditional basis for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the center of gravity of Russia's conventional military strength at a strategic level, the Soviet inheritance of stockpiles, are being expended at unsustainable and functionally irreplaceable rates, and that once they are expended Russia's long-term capacity to conduct a fourth continuation war would be removed.
Realism would note that Russia's military edge is ebbing, that it's current rate of expenditures are unsustainable, and thus that relative negotiating position power will decrease away from Russia's favor of the coming years, and thus potentially create the conditions for negotiations that would not lead to a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the Western coalition, on the basis of supporting Ukraine against Russia, is actually mobilizing the political and economic capacity to scale military production, productions that must be greatly scaled to meet other major global competitors but which historically have observably not been invested in solely on the notional basis of those other competitors.
Realism would note a great many things that would work against arguments for a ceasefire in the near term.
'Realism' is no more a legitimization of 'what I want' than trying to claim to be a 'Rationalist' means your positions are any less monkey-brained than your opponents.
It would be interesting in hearing why you think the sanctions strategy was a massive mistake for the US, given that the US/European sanction strategy has clearly delivered it's intended goals of limiting Russian economic capabilities (which is why Russia's only meaningful growth is now a result of a militarized economy rather than it's civilian economics), restrict access to global markets (which is why Russia has to pay significant mark-ups and risk-premiums on both imports and sales, and gets stuck with things like it's India Rupee savings), and done so in a way that didn't cripple the pro-Ukraine coalition's economic and political viability in the midst of major economic input rearrangements (the Europeans haven't cratered their own economies in the process of building up import-substitution infrastructure, and negated the Russian energy blackmail threats).
Is this going to hinge on arguments that the US didn't go far enough to try to enforce some sort of global embargo on Russian exports- which it wouldn't have had the political capacity to do? Or that the Europeans continued to import energy from the Russians- when building the physical infrastructure to import from other sources was going to take time? Or that Russia is expanding its economic dependence on China- a factor which has led the Europeans to be far more concerned and willing to distance themselves from China than they were before?
What percentage of Ukrainian men aged 18-35 are dead?
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I think we have differing understanding of the facts on the ground. I don’t think Russia’s military capacity has been degraded significantly. I think they seem to be able relatively to resupply.
I also think your description of the history of Russian involvement in Ukraine is a bit one sided.
You also ignore that Ukraine’s military has been heavily limited. So if the war goes on, not sure they will be in a better position in a year.
Also if the US support drops out, then that would be a material blow to Ukraine unless Europe substantially increases their assistance to Ukraine. I’m not sure Europe can militarily or financially. The US could also offer to Europe more military supplies to be in nato countries if they are worried Russia won’t stop. Of course, I’ve always found this argument interesting (Russia military is collapsing but if we don’t stop them in Ukraine they will roll into Paris — the two are incompatible). In any event, I’m sure our allies would be more comforted by putting US boots on the ground in their countries as a deterrent to Russia compared to this endless funding of Ukraine that won’t go anywhere.
And the reasons I think the sanctions were a bad idea is because it could lead to de dollarization / FDI into the US—both of which I see as bad things.
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It is worth noting that the United States applied a lot of pressure to make this happen.
It is not. As per Ukraine's commander-in-chief:
(Source)
NATO officials are now saying that a Ukrainian victory would not end the Russian threat:
(Source)
I agree broadly with you on the problems with a ceasefire tomorrow (in part because of the above): if Russia isn't very satisfied with the conclusion, is has every incentive to come back for more.
Minor addendum:
I agree that it probably hampered Russian access to certain high-end stuff (microchips) that it needs for war production. But the World Bank upgraded its economic status this year. So it seems like the Russian economy is "fine" (although perhaps they're running an internal house of cards to keep that up somehow and it can't last forever - I don't have any particular reason to believe this, though.)
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People have been trying to sell this line since the beginning of the conflict and yet Russia is militarily in a better position now than it was then. Especially with respect to its military industry.
I'd trade soviet stockpiles for production capacity in a heartbeat, and building up the army that has the most experience with modern high intensity warfare in the world is just a bonus.
The only valuable thing the Russians are losing is manpower, which is plentiful but non-renewable given their demographics, and they are rightly taking a slow and methodical approach given the relative value of lives vs materiel.
Realism would note that the West has vastly overestimated its economic power and move the lines on the map accordingly because weak empires are dangerous. Otherwise reality will do it on its own.
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This is delusional. Obliterating the formal militaries of near peer competitors is the one thing the US military is utterly dominant at. The US loses wars when you go all fourth generational warfare and wait for the American public to get tired of hearing about the steady trickle of dead American soldiers and foreign civilians (who are innocent and mostly women ad children, of course).
When was the last time the United States did that in a ground war on the enemy's own territory?
Desert Storm, and arguably the initial invasion in 2003 as well before it turned into an occupation/counter-insurgency. Saddam had (on paper) the 4th largest army in the World in Desert Storm IIRC.
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How exactly can the US deploy in sufficient force to defeat Russia without immediately creating gigantic openings in the Middle East and Asia Pacific that would be taken advantage of by their enemies? Russia is a dangerous, nuclear-equipped opponent that is actually ahead of the US in at least one category of weapon (hypersonics) and the stories I've seen coming out of Ukraine make the case that they have the edge in electronic/signals warfare as well (though stories coming out of an active warzone should be taken with a few grains of salt). They're a serious threat that would require significant investments of materiel and personnel to deal with - Russia and Iraq are not the same. Making a serious attempt at defeating them would involve pulling resources from the rest of the empire which in turn means that he moment this conflict starts the US would lose 90% of their existing military manufacturing capacity as they lost the ability to import semiconductors from a China who would be in the middle of invading Taiwan, safe and secure in the knowledge that the US military was busy elsewhere.
Of course that entire discussion is academic, because in order for that to even happen you need to find some way of turning off the nuclear option - Russia and the US going into direct conflict just means the world ends and the survivors get to experience Threads for themselves. Sure, the Russians don't actually win, but the US doesn't either. Serious military conflict between Russia and the US just means the end of the world, and unserious military conflict (like a proxy war) means the US is unable to bring enough force to bear to actually beat the Russians. If you disagree, I'd be more than happy to bet that Russia wins the war in Ukraine.
Russia can't establish reliable air superiority against Ukraine. What makes you think it would require a significant investment of resources to gain air dominance and support the Ukrainians right back to their pre-2014 borders?
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The probability of Russia vs. USA in a non-general war (i.e. US is not attempting to invade Russia) going nuclear is importantly different from 1. It's nowhere near 0, but it's not 1 either.
Also, Threads is pessimistic regarding a near-future nuclear war. Nuclear winter is mostly a hoax, and to the extent it's not it's outdated; modern arsenals are considerably smaller than Cold War ones. Yes, if we get to the 2030s and SALT/START break due to Chinese exceptionalism, we could get back to Cold War levels, but that's not happening this decade.
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